In every selection process the goal of an employer in locate and select candidate that possess traits that would make them suitable for the job and make their adaptation to the job easier. Employers are looking for certain characteristics during the selection process that differentiates candidates and helps them identify a suitable candidate. Some of the traits that can be expected by employers are hardworking, positive, dependable, self-motivated, organized, effective under pressure, team-oriented, effective communicator, confident, flexible, etc. (Taylor, 2015). The existence of these characteristics determines the selection of a candidate. The whole selection process is based on the employer assessing whether a candidate has desired personality traits that separates them from the crowd. In today’s challenging work environment, assessment of personality traits is essential as it helps HR to narrow the field and locate employees that are right for the organization.
Benefits
Assessing personality traits would surely help in improving the selection process as it would help the organization to:
Understand Job Characteristics
Assessing personality traits are helpful as it can identify certain job characteristics that might be needed to complete job duties. These characteristics can only be identified when personality traits for the job are assessed. By assessing traits, the employer can find specific behaviour that is expected from the employee and helps in finding individuals that already possess such traits. Therefore, assessing personality traits would enhance the selection process as each employee selected would have specific traits required by their jobs (Bell, 2015).
Experience Low Turnover
Narrow Candidate Pool
Overcome Limited Time
Mostly, interviews are limited by time, but by assessing personality traits the interviewer can get more time to analyse and understand candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. By having more time to deal with the candidate and understanding the personality traits, the employer can make an effective decision in terms of choosing the most suitable candidates that would find it easy to adapt to the company’s culture and find similarities with other employees in the organization (Bell, 2015).
Challenges
But, there are challenges associated with the assessment of personality traits enhancing the selection process, as the process can become:
Time Consuming
Fabricated
Personality trait assessment might fail with several candidates as many answer questions to please the employers, rather than sharing their personal viewpoints. This process can discredit the whole process and the employer might end up hiring employees that are unsuitable for the company. By answering in a social acceptable way many candidates might end up painting a false image of themselves, rather than sharing their own perceptions that might be more relatable to the organization’s needs (Bell, 2015).
Lack of Diversity
When an organization hires similar employees with a similar way of thinking and background, they end up typecasting their workforce. The result is a group of individuals that lack diversity. This is disadvantageous to the organization as employees never learn to handle and work with people from other backgrounds. Therefore, having employees with similar personality traits is also disadvantageous as the organization ends up lacking diversity (Bell, 2015).
Costly
The whole process of personality trait assessment can be very costly for the organization as employee need to be hired to assess candidates. If these employees are hired from outside, they charge a consultation fees and when they hire from within the employees held responsible would spend their work time on assessment related activities. Overall, the process will cost the organization, as the process of assessing every candidate will take a significant amount of time and money (Bell, 2015).
Conflicted
It is possible that a candidate might not be able to present their true self as their experience and training might have taught them to shield it. Therefore, it will become a major challenge to assess the personality traits of the individual and might lead to rejection of several suitable candidates (Bell, 2015).
Context
There are several situations where the assessment of personality traits for enhancing selection process can be applied. Some of them have been discussed above in strengths and weaknesses of the process. For an organization that faces high employee turnover it can be challenging to find means to hire and retain employees for a long term. Several organizations face this problem as their attrition rate is much higher than their rate of hiring, the end result is the lack of talent in the organization for taking the organization forward and promoting from within. In this case, it would be wise to perform assessment of personality traits of each candidate, as it would ensure that the selection process would become effective and employees that are suitable for the organization and specific jobs are called in and hired.
Another context where the assessment of personality traits would be helpful in enhancing the selection process would be where an organization only wants to bring in people that have the right talent for the job and an attitude similar to the organization. In such a situation, the organization would need to narrow the pool of candidates. In this situation, assessment of personality traits would end up shortening the list of employees and provide the organization with like-minded candidates. The advantage of assessment of personality traits in this situation would be enjoyed by the organization as they will get to select from a list of most suitable after rationing by a larger group.
Conclusion
References
Bell., D. (2015, 2 October). Advantages and Disadvantages of Employee Personality Tests. Retrieved 10 July 2016 from, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/advantages-disadvantages-employee-personality-tests-david-bell
Fisher., C.D. & Boyle., G.J. (1997, 1 February). Personality and employee selection: credibility regained. Retrieved 10 July 2016 from, http://epublications.bond.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=discussion_papers
Taylor., N.F. (2015, 1 May). The Personality Traits That Will Get You Hired. Retrieved 10 July 2016 from, http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7950-personality-traits-hired.html
